kdiddy.org

Dudes! Double-yoo-tee-eff is up with still not being able to write here on the regular?

Spring semester is officially over and I’m happy to report that I did very well, grades-wise. However, I’m taking a summer class and that started Monday. It’s only six weeks long and it’s the last required course that I have for my MA (just one more elective in the fall!).

The class itself is fine. It’s an organizational behavior course through the business school that is mostly made up of undergrads. I am the sole humanities dork. The rest of those guys are in engineering and chemistry and computer science and iwillmakemoremoneythanyouism.

There are many hilarious bits in this whole thing. Like how someone actually snickered when I stated that I was a professional writing person. And today when we were talking about these principles of human resource management that touted such crazy notions as paying good wages, not treating them like shit, etc. The instructor asked what the overarching philosophy was of the principles and the undergrads were pulling out big words like…uh…”derivative” or something. And I raised my hand and said, “Uh, that employees are people and not batteries?” My classmates got that look of faint recognition on their faces. I hope I didn’t blow their minds too much.

There’s also a vague (so far) anti-union feel to the readings, which isn’t at all surprising. I’m just mostly amused by the language used. Like, “Such-and-such manager was successful because he was able to communicate with the labor people.” I get the impression that these young business students are, perhaps indirectly, taught that people in unions are all barbaric assholes who want nothing more than to harsh your capitalist mellow.

Me, my mom, and my dad, circa 1992

I am not union and, because of my line of work, probably never will be. But many of my family members and friends are and it’s a little troubling to think that their future managers are being brought up with this attitude. I’m not saying that all unions are perfect and I’m not saying that there aren’t plenty of assholes in unions. Just…you know…remember that these are PEOPLE (there’s that word again) that we’re talking about.

ANYWAY, I was going to tell you all about this little confrontation that I had with the manager of this bar that the husband was playing records at on Saturday, but I’m almost over it. And, yes, I wrote angry and vulgar couplets about him and his mother and it made me feel better.

We’re going to Detroit this weekend for the music festival and I kind of agreed to take one of the quizzes online at 10:30 on Friday morning, when I will most likely be hungover from our first night in Detroit and post-Penguins festivities, so that should be cute.

Back when a dude broke into our house, and after the initial shock wore off, the husband and I had some questions. Like, why would the guy take the cumbersome and not very valuable DVDs and not the lightweight and higher-street-value Wii? (By the way, ne’er-do-wells who may be reading, that is NOT an invitation to finish what that jackass started.) The cop chuckled and shook his head at our naivete.

“You would steal that because you have common sense. Criminals like this guy do NOT have common sense,” he explained.

A lack of common sense is probably responsible for the events that transpired earlier this evening.

The baby’s baseball practices started tonight. The husband and I were chilling on the bleachers, giggling at our scrawny kid rounding the bases. A mom behind me yelled at someone: “GO FIGHT SOMEWHERE ELSE! THERE’S KIDS HERE!” I jerked around and saw two young men, one no longer wearing a shirt, walking toward their cars and continuing to argue. The husband and I shook our heads at their stupidity and went back to watching the practice.

I turned around again to see if they were still arguing and noticed that one of the guys was pointing something at the other guy. Something silver. And shiny.

“Hey,” I said to the husband. “Does that guy have a gun?”

In retrospect, my reaction to this new information was really puzzling. I turned back around and went back to watching the practice, not really concerned that someone was brandishing a firearm just a few yards from where my son was. Luckily, the other parents had their BAD THING thinking caps on and yelled at the coaches to get the kids out of the immediate area and started calling 911.

I turned back around and watched the rest of the events unfold. From what I could gather, the two guys were fighting over a woman and there may have been some custody issues. Other parents went over to yell at the guy, but I tend to stay away from people with guns. Yosemite Sam’s girlfriend became irritated with the confrontational parents and whined, “He put the gun away! Gawd! What’s your problem?”

No common sense. I don’t know who shows up at a kids’ baseball practice to start some shit. I don’t know who brings a gun to a kids’ baseball practice. I don’t know who draws a gun at a kids’ baseball practice. And I really don’t know who asks such a dumb fucking question as, “What’s your problem?” when a gun is pulled with 50 kids, including presumably one of their own, nearby.

Thanks to Facebook, I’m pretty close to collecting every person I’ve ever met in my entire life. The connections that I have to people that add me now are getting more and more fuzzy, like, “Oh, yes, we did have World History together in 9th grade. What have you been up to since that day that we learned about the Battle of Hastings? Harold FTW, right?”

I kind of like it, though. I mean, I imagine I should be lamenting the time just a year or so ago when, if I reflected on so-and-so, all I could do is wonder what they were up to. At best, I could Google them but those almost always led me to pointless genealogy sites. Now I can quickly find out who they married, how many kids they have and, usually, what they’re doing at any given moment.

But I think it’s kind of nice, at least for a social phobe like me, to have that bare minimum of contact at all times. I get to avoid that awkward conversation if I happen to bump into someone on the street: “Oh, hi! Great to see you. How’ve you been? Okay, I’ve got to get going/do something other than this.”

Anyway, my favorite thing to do now is if someone from high school adds me on Facebook and they’ve turned out to be hardcore Republicans, I read their wall back to November 4 to see if they got all pissy.

What? I’ve never made any claims to being sane or mature.

Also, my kid startled me by knocking over a chair in the dining room. I replied, “Yo, what the FUCK?” I’m just going to start apologizing now for how he turns out. He never stood a chance.

I got a bag of coffee beans from a local roaster in my CSA box last week. I was really looking forward to trying them and yesterday morning I ground them up and brewed my morning medicine, that which fuels me to actually get out of the house each morning.

I poured my cup and took a sip. It sucked. It was bitter and tasted like the stuff that sits on burners all day at the 7-11. I was upset. And it all went downhill from there.

My kid has been a real pain in the ass lately about getting ready for school. He dawdles and whines about how he doesn’t want to go. As far as I can ascertain, there’s no real problem causing him anxiety, no bullies or anything, he just doesn’t want to go because, “all we do is LEARN.”

So he was pulling out all the stops yesterday. Whining. Stomping his feet. Trying to slap my hands away when I dragged him out of bed. Screaming back when I told him for the sixth time that he needed to eat his breakfast. Far too much for me to deal with on a half cup of shite coffee.

While I was explaining to him that, “What do you mean why do you need to put your socks on? You need to put your socks on because WE. NEED. TO. LEAVE!” the sleeping husband peeled open an eye a little and mumbled, “What’s his problem?”

I stomped out of the house with the baby and put him on the bus. When I got home I started working on getting the husband up and out of bed in a reasonable amount of time. Around 8:20, I told him to get out of bed for the third time, and he snapped at me, “I KNOW! I HAVE A FUCKING EXAM TODAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!”

I hated both of them in that moment. I couldn’t believe that I had to endure both of them getting pissed at me for trying to get them off to where they needed to go, especially when they just had to go to school while I had to go to work and school and deal with situations at my job that, frankly, aren’t always that fun or easy to deal with. Plus, the nagging anxiety that my husband is graduating from college in the midst of the shittiest economy ever and it’s possible that the thin financial string that we’ve been hanging by the past few years will have to sustain us even longer, provided nothing catastrophic happens like me getting laid off.

And the people who were so terrible at their jobs that our economy is now in the state that it is not only are guaranteed to keep their jobs, they get millions of dollars in bonuses.

That thought set me off and I went on this misanthropic spiral thinking about all of the utterly shitty people in the world and how they go on to create shittier copies of themselves and how I wished I had some superpower where I could drop 2 liter bottles of Coke on the toes of people I hated without consequence. And it’s not that we need to start regulating the number of children that people have but there does need to be some kind of social shift in the face of biological imperatives that it’s okay to not want to have kids but goddammit why do some of the most vocal proponents of the childfree movement have to be such a-holes and it’s not that I’m a total nihilist because I’ve felt something real when I’ve been in the presence of my family.

Oh and THEN I read this article that pissed me off even more. I mean, it’s not that it’s hard to draw parallels between Pittsburgh and Detroit but they’re two totally different places and what works in one place won’t necessarily work in the other. And I must have been looking for things to make me angry because then I went and read the comments which just made it worse because I hate people and all of their stupid “thoughts” and “opinions.”

I don’t know. Maybe I should go back on anti-depressants.

Or spike my coffee once I get better beans.

I was pissy throughout the day. I think my little family is at its worst when we convince ourselves that we’re not in this together. That we’re the only ones bogged down in our struggles and the other two members simply don’t understand what we go through day to day. I don’t know how to fix that.

You know what I LOVE? I love studying for an exam for hours and hours and trying to tell myself that it won’t be that bad in an attempt to calm my test-phobic self down and then sitting down to take the test and seeing that I have no fucking idea what the first question is talking about.

That’s what just happened in my grammar final. I eventually guessed and worked my bullshitting magic to justify my guess and, of course, when I finally left and checked my book I came to the totally shocking realization that I was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy off.

I have no real idea of how well I did on the rest of the test. I had such a panic over that first question that the rest is a blur and when I went through my answers I found a couple more that I had totally screwed up. I fixed them. But I have to wonder how many I missed in my glimpsing. Now I just have to wait and see what my grade is and hope that I did well enough that I don’t have to take the class again.

Ugh. I’m just so tired of this whole thing. I just want my fucking degree. I think about having to deal with this for another year and I want to cry. I want to quit so bad. I just want to have a job and to take care of my family. I don’t want to burn the candle at both ends, I don’t want to impress people with how much I’m able to juggle. I just want to actually finish more than one load of laundry per week. I want to actually go grocery shopping instead of grabbing two or three things (that I can’t afford anyway) after work. I want to spend time with my kid without worrying about all of the other stuff that I should be doing. And I want a drink, dammit.

My plans for today included laundry, eating, maybe going to the nail shop, taking a nap, and whatever the female equivalent is of laying on the couch and scratching one’s balls.

Instead, the mail came. And in the mail there was a letter from PNC Bank’s collections department.

Oh, yes they did.

I haven’t blown up like that in awhile. I was shaking. I was screaming. I confessed to wanting to do very illegal things to every PNC branch in the city. I called several different numbers (because of course they kept bouncing me around) and bitched at every single customer service rep I talked to. I don’t normally do that, because I know that most people are just doing their jobs and trying to scrape by themselves. But I now have a pretty decent amount of contempt for all bank employees, since this is some divide and conquer bullshit. Give broke people a somewhat decent job screwing over other broke people, all the while gambling away their retirement funds…it all makes me sick.

But what I found out from one poor woman who had the shitty fate of talking to me was that when I settled my account once and for all (or so I thought) about a month ago, the money that I handed over never went through and I was once again responsible for $137.74. That amount includes a $29.95 fraudulent charge that I disputed, the investigation fee (since they somehow found in favor of the merchant, which is a whole other WTF), and a couple overdraft fees thrown in for good measure.

“So I give your institution money that I can’t afford to hand over and which your institution does not deserve, all in the name of just getting you out of my life, and you guys lost that money?”

“Well, ma’am…” she said WITH ATTITUDE.

“Oh, well, that’s a real crackerjack operation you guys are running over there. Seriously. Awesome fucking work. I’ll go to the branch AGAIN and settle this AGAIN.”

When I got to the bank, I sat down with a guy (let’s call him “Skippy”) I’d dealt with at least two other times in this debacle and who had been a douche to me before. I considered the possibility that I would leave that building in handcuffs and charged with assault and like, terroristic communist threats or something.

As Skippy explained to me, when I settled my account the last time, they sent the general ledger credit slip to their collections department and that department rejected the slip for some reason. Skippy insisted that I had done nothing wrong and could consider myself free and clear.

“Oh. So you guys made a mistake.”

“Eh, no, it’s not a mistake,” Skippy replied. The collections department rejects these slips for any number of reasons, like the teller didn’t sign her name clearly enough or didn’t list all of the information on the slip.

“So you guys made a mistake.”

“No,” Skippy insisted. They had done everything correctly with my payment, just in a way that resulted in me getting a threatening letter from the collections department.

“I’m sorry, Skippy. I may be a writer and not a financial whiz like you kids here, but that sounds like you guys made a mistake.”

Skippy, ever the optimist, maintained that they had fucked up in the correct manner, and that if I received any more letters detailing their stellar operations to let him know, so that he and I could again discuss the details of the awesome way that they continue taking money from me and being idiots.

What’s really fucked up is that there is no “closing” my account with them. If PNC insists that I arranged payment to a merchant through them, they will re-open my account to “honor their agreement,” once again putting me in arrears. And considering I already had one fraudulent charge to a business that I’d never heard of and never received anything from honored by PNC, it seems reasonable for me to worry that they have the power to conjure up any number of charges that they can honor and bleed me for money for who knows how long.

All in all, trying to close my account has cost me close to $2,000, mostly in fees and trying to clear the new and exciting negative balances that they keep dreaming up. I never did get my hands on my economic stimulus. All of that went to PNC.

Do you want to know why we’re in an economic crisis right now? Because the people who run our financial institutions and businesses are shitty business people. They are stupid. They don’t understand how economics work and think that their crafty methods of screwing people over are brilliant moves. We have a generation of failures running this country.

There was nothing on TV this morning so I started watching I Love Lucy and while I was watching it, I was looking at Google Reader and there were TWO Lucy-related secrets today. Weird, no?

A friend of the husband’s was in town last night to play records at AVA and he was supposed to stay the night at our house. So, I spent pretty much all day cleaning. Our house is always pretty messy and dusty since we never really have time or energy to clean. The husband is, of course, out of commission with his hand so I was on my own and had a pretty sobering moment when I realized that I couldn’t possibly clean the whole house myself and had to determine which parts were the nastiest/most potentially embarrassing.

About 15 minutes after I finished cleaning the bathrooms and was sprawled out on the bed panting, the husband came home from work and announced that he had to poop. After he emerged, I whined, “I don’t know why you always do that right after I do the toilets.”

“That’s why I don’t like cleaning,” he replied. “It’s a Sisyphean effort. You’re Sisyphus.”

“Yes, and you’re this huge rock that shits all over my squeaky clean toilets.”

And then…THEN. The husband’s friend called and said that he was meeting up with “a friend” in town and would be staying at a hotel, after all.

GAHHHH

Well, at least the house is clean. I guess. Whatever.

In continuing in my Suzy Homemaker routine, I’m baking some homemade Nilla Wafers. They’re my dad’s favorite cookie and his birthday was Friday, so I’m making some for him. I hope they don’t suck.

I was reading about photic sneeze reflex because I sneeze nearly every morning when I wake up and it’s been like that for as long as I can remember. Essentially, I am allergic to being awake and I think I need to parlay this into a doctor’s excuse from, like, life and stuff.

So, dude! I’m turning 30 in less than 48 hours. I feel like I should…I don’t know…squeeze in a couple ill-advised relationships and get some high-interest credit cards and binge drink in the next few days before all of that stuff magically switches from charming anecdotal material to outright stupidity.

I was thinking yesterday about how I’m pretty reserved on this blog. On my LJ, I used to rant often and extensively about anything that was on my mind. I really don’t do that here at all. There are a lot of circumstantial reasons for that, mostly me being busy with work and school and life and just not having the time or energy to sit down and write just for recreation.

I think it also has a lot to do with me just not really knowing who’s reading this and just feeling kind of protective of what I put out here. I will admit outright that I’m insecure and while I definitely feel myself giving less of a fuck about other people’s opinions of me as I get older, it’s a hard habit to break when you’ve been like that your whole life.

And, of course, I have my professional reputation and the reputation of the people close to me to think about. I’m probably even a little too careful about censoring myself in the fear of me doing something that I love to do, namely writing with an (mostly) interactive audience, affecting my life and career. I often worry that my profanity could cause problems, but I honestly don’t think so.

Anyway, I think the space on the internet that is most “me” these days is Google Reader. I subscribe to an obscene number of sites. I’m like Johnny 5 in Short Circuit. I need input. I would read or otherwise absorb information about almost anything all day if I could. One of my favorite things about Google Reader is sharing stuff that I find interesting and reading the stuff that my friends share. I’ve been thinking recently that it would be really fun to post just a list of stuff that I share in Reader on here once a day, since while I don’t always have time to update here, I’m always reading stuff.

In order to do that, I feel the need to sort of re-introduce myself to those of you that only know me from this space and didn’t interact with me on LJ. I’m sure it’s no surprise that I’m a registered Democrat, and I remain so despite having serious qualms with the party and their pussyfooting. I’m actually far more to the left and I wouldn’t bat away any accusations of being, ideologically, a socialist. It’s just how I get down. I will admit that my misanthropy seems to clash with a lot of my politics, but I don’t know. I dislike most people, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want them to have health care or an education or just to be able to live a good life.

I’m not exactly pro-Obama. I like the guy. I think he’ll make a decent president and I hope he wins. I do have serious qualms with his stance against gay marriage and the telecom immunity bullshit. My respect for his obvious intellect and compassion does not erase the fact that I know that he is a politician and is in it to win this thing. But I’m choosing to view his more questionable moves as tactical means to an end.

I really dislike McCain and Palin and just the whole MO of the GOP at this point in time. I know why millions of people will vote for them, but I’ll be frank and say that I think that’s a dumb move.

So, all of that is to serve as a sort of disclaimer that a lot of what I’ll be posting here from Reader will be anti-McCain/Palin and, you know, I’m sorry if you have a problem with that but please don’t see that as an invitation to hit me back with some anti-Obama stuff. Not only is most of that just plumb moronic, but it’s directed at the wrong person.

Besides, I’m turning 30 soon and I see that as my pass to start telling people to get the fuck out of my face with that bullshit.

So, to start off, here’s a selection of what I’ve shared this week so far:

As Abstinence Pledges Falter, A New “Middle Class Morality” Emerges

Economic miracle, environmental disaster

Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the Hudson family tragedy

Irony Overload: Hottie Reality Show Contestant Complains About Sexism

How Media Deregulation Kidnapped Natalee Holloway

Ancient mummy hair suggests drug use (aka ancient motherfuckers be trippin’)

Hooman gets in, goes away, returns with fishez

Excessive water consumption is b.s. My comment on reader: “word. i hate drinking water just to drink water and i’m glad i don’t have to feel “guilty” for not doing so anymore.”

Sandra Schultz Newman and some bullshit

Giant Candy Corn Still for Sale. My comment on reader: “they’re still for sale because that shit’s fucking stupid. then again…I’m actually surprised they haven’t shown up on my street yet.”

Sarah Palin, proud socialist

12 Abandoned Houses, Homes, and Ghost Towns

I should also point out that a LOT of what I share first comes to me via Angela who might possibly be a more voracious reader than I am. She finds the best stuff and she needs to be hired by someone who will pay her obscene amounts of money to do so.

So, I got a really irritating letter from the bank. Not quite as panic-inducing as some of their previous correspondence, but it means that some time next week I have to take time out of my day YET AGAIN to deal with those fools. And don’t THINK I’m not going to make some snide remarks about how glad I am to help THEM through this difficult time, what with the financial crisis hitting our rich people so hard. In fact, I might ask if I can have the honor of putting the $30 that they’re asking for now right in the hands of the CEO and be like, “Oh, I was just going to use this for something silly, like my water bill. Here you go. Have a retreat or something!”

Anyway, I had to go to CVS a little bit ago to get some pain relievers because…well, PNC picked a really bad time of the month to act like this if you know what I mean. While I was walking back, the nail shop pulled me in.

The manicurist called me “hon,” and spoke at lightning speed to her mom on the phone and the next thing I knew I had a perfectly corny full set of nails.

Typing is difficult, but I figure folks at the bank will know not to mess with me. I will scratch a bitch.

Sometimes I think me and my family are being directed by some omnipotent force with a seriously sick sense of humor. God? I don’t know. Maybe if god is a drunken Woody Allen, then his direction for last night’s comedy of errors would be something like this:

Okay, Greedo (cat). You haven’t knocked anything off of any surface in months. Now stare deviously at the cactus on the mantle in the baby’s room. Lick your lips and jump onto the mantle. Tiptoe to the cactus. Now touch…touch…push! Now hide! They’re going to be pissed!

Kelly, grab Greedo, call him an asshole and give him to the husband, then carefully pick up the cactus with an oven mitt.

Cactus, stare up at Kelly with a “What did I do?” look. Great!

Husband, start your futile attempts to re-pot the cactus with the dry-ass soil. Wiggle the cactus to see if it will stay put. Once it starts to fall, grab it with your bare hand! Perfect! Now swear! Keep swearing! Tell the cat you’re going to kill him. Amazing. This is great stuff, guys.

Enter neighbors across the street! Alright, 3-year-old daughter, start screaming and crying! Keep going! Parents! Don’t make any attempts to comfort her. Repeat this process for the next two hours.

Okay, now we’re at the bar. Kelly, order a gimlet and some potstickers. Order another gimlet. Burn the roof of your mouth on the potstickers. Order another gimlet….aaaaaand one more. Great! Talk to Jwan about some stuff. Talk to Karen about vegetables. Show Maria your iPhone and then slur to her about graduate school.

Alright, let’s go home. Husband, curl up next to Kelly and attempt to make some moves. Kelly, be waaaaayyy too tired and breathe vodka breath into the husband’s face.

Oh, it’s 4:50 a.m.! Kelly, it’s time for your sneezing attack. And the baby, it’s time for you to get up and need some help turning the light on in the bathroom. Yeah, you guys do this every night. You know the drill.

Kelly, it’s 6 a.m. Your alarm is going off. Press the snooze button. Repeat this action 15 times. Alright, now it’s 7:15 and you really need to get out of bed. Note that your hangover seems to reside solely in your knees. Check the weather on your phone and wonder why you were reading the Wikipedia page for William F. Buckley, Jr.